The alleged Syndicate alleged reboot allegedly being allegedly made by Riddick developers Starbreeze remains only alleged, but more and more alleged signs point to its alleged development. Latest of these is a chuck of script which has found its way to Siliconera. If this is real, Eurocorp returns – but the plot will concern a resistance movement against it, perhaps a la the original game’s expansion, American Revolt.

What we’ve got here is some background exposition about brain chips, some setup about Eurocorp’s brutality towards citizens, and the apparent fate of the main character’s parents, and a possible name for the main character – Miles. (This would seem to suggest it’ll be less team-centric than the original, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves). Here’s a clip, but the full lot’s at Siliconera:

In other news, the terrorist hacker known by the cryptonick “LOGOS” has been identified as one KRIS DELANEY. The EuroCorp Security Agency suspects Delaney to be the leader of the subverter cell that has terrorized Manhattan for years, culminating in the Diamond Hill complex bombing. And later, we take a look at Gulf Partner’s city raft La Ballena and the diplomatic crisis that’s threatening the relationship between EuroCorp and Gulf.

It’s hard not to see something an implication in the full script snippets that, at some point in the game, the main character may take up arms against, rather than for, Eurocorp. This will be… divisive if my speculation is anything like correct. The traditional, satirically sadistic thrill of Syndicate was in being the megabastards, not in defeating them.

Will this new game, if it does exist, have the big brass lower organs necessary to put its players fully in the shoes of agents for a psychopathic corporation and without demanding that they face up to the ethical horror of it? I’m also guessing, however, that there’s going to be a fair bit of moral back-and-forth about the resistance too – clearly, innocents are being harmed by their violent revolt.

Who knows – I’m guessing wildly based on a tiny amount of out-of-context information, so you should probably roll your eyes at me and call me a madman. We’ve been hearing this rumour for so damned long now, though – isn’t it about time EA or Starbreeze ‘fessed up at last?

Of course, if this is a shooter rather than an isometric squad thinger, there’s also Paradox’s planned Syndicate-style game…

I’d like a game where you start out working for the good guys – the rebel alliance, the resistance what-have-you – and half way through the game you (or the character you are forced to play in a linear shooter) sells out, betrays all their former friends and starts a career as a massive bastard.

Bonus points if the player is forced to interrogate, using Guantanimo-style techniques, their former friends. You remember that plucky soldier who helped you though training at the beginning of the game? Now you’re shouting questions at him while he stands naked in a stress position for the 6th hour. THAT would be a twist.

Being forced to be a mustache twirling bastard at the halfway point is as bad as being forced to play goodie two shoes.

Now, if it’s optional, that’s great. And starting as a bastard and staying that way? Also fine. But being forced into things because your character is a twat has always been the worst kind of plot device.

Even though I have a terrible memory, I still remember Atlantic Accelerator level( the one in which youar agents are separated from the start on some oil rig and then countless RPG’s are fired from side of the map and everyone is dead), dying by wandering in a metro tunnel and a cutscene in which your boss is throwing a lamp through a holoscreen because you failed a mission.

Oh yes, I’d forgotten the lamp! Also the a new life awaits you in the offworld colonies welcome to the dawning of a new empire blimp.
I stand by my feeling that it didn’t really have much need of a plot beyond “take over the world/shoot gun/create army of zombie civilians”. I’m not sure if the PC version was any different but there was no ending cutscene or plot development if you beat Atlantic Accelerator on the Amiga, beyond the triumph blimp.
Perhaps American Revolt had that, but I don’t know of anyone in the history of gaming who has actually completed it.

No, no… they’re good names, don’t get me wrong – they just don’t… fit.
O God, how I so wish a miraculous developer would arrive out of the fog of mediocrity, much like Enkidu the Wild Man emerged from the Sumerian wilderness, and gave unto us the RIGHT name. A developer, mayhap, with a name that abandoned the foolish arrogance that has blighted Man in these dark times.
“Starbreeze”? Hah! To think that mortals could imagine the forces at work amongst the Gods themselves. A clean death is too generous a fate for these heretics.

No, a suitable developer needs a name closer to Earth herself – a name possibly taken from one of the myriad creatures that dwell amongst her waters.
Fish? No.
Crocodile? No. Such ferociousness is unbecoming of one whose task is only to create.
Frog? Hmm. Verily do I find myself intoxicated by the delicate fragrance of sweet Muse herself entwined around the name.
But what kind of frog? O, how it tears at me. Never again shall I sleep until the answer reveals itself. Though madness may claw at my very being and fatigue doth sink her fangs into my very soul, I shall not rest until I discover that which I seek.
Also I could really do with a piss right about now.

If we’ll be working with the “resistance” on this game, I hope they will depict them as bastard and devious as Eurocorp themselves. If not more (example: Eurocorp’s competition). And if they are a terrorist cell, I expect them to be a proper desperate terrorist cell: suicide bombings, torture, etc. included.

I’m sure it won’t be a bunch idealized liberty warriors. No, sir.

I’m also sure that there will be no super-model-bodied female sidekick whose only purpose would be to show some gratuitous cleavage.

No, Red Faction Armageddon and Homefront, I’m not talking about you. Oh, but that’s a sweet macaroni necklace! Did you made it all by yourselves? How nice! Don’t pay attention to what Jimmy says – you are both so special to me [cuddle].

Red Faction: Guerrilla seemed to go some way to demonstrate the desperate dickishness of resistance fighters, though even there they were a bit on the squeaky-clean side. There is one bit where you blow up a building where a bunch of civilian businessmen are meeting, I seem to recall, though.

When you decide to pull yourself together and make a game about a hypocritical cyborg beating a man to death with his own severed arm while repeatedly declaring your intentions not to to harm him.
Could you do that?
ARE YOU MAN ENOUGH?